Pathe News has a great clip from 1948 about someone going shopping in Crouch End. Note how even in the 1940s there were prams aplenty on the pavements – though back then only single-buggies, not today’s double-buggy plethora.

You can also see pedestrians crossing the road outside what is now Budgens, which in the film has no pedestrian crossing. Had the film been made later in the year, you would be able to see the zebra crossing that was put in there during 1948, complete with what was then an experimental stripped pattern painted on the road and which is now a standard part of all zebra crossings.

The other thing that struck me was how the person being filmed was quite happy to park her baby in the pram outside the shop and then turn her back on it and walk away from it, entering shops to do her shopping and also, later in the film, a wonderfully unchanged Hornsey Town Hall. As the film is meant to be about a typical person going about their business, I’m sure that’s therefore representative of how many people behaved at the time – and very different from the ultra-cautious must-be-in-sight-at-all-times approach more usually seen today.